荷里活華人

Bruce Lee and Suzie Wong – mention “Chinese in Hollywood” and it’s all about the exotic.

But it’s not.

Hollywood Chinese is a captivating revelation on a little-known chapter of cinema: the Chinese in American feature films. From the first Chinese American film produced in 1916, to Ang Lee’s triumphant Brokeback Mountain nine decades later, Hollywood Chinese brings together a fascinating portrait of actors, directors, writers, and iconic images to show how the Chinese have been imagined in movies, and how filmmakers have and continue to navigate an industry that was often ignorant about race, but at times paradoxically receptive.

Hollywood Chinese is produced, directed, written and edited by Academy Award® nominee and triple Sundance award-winning filmmaker, Arthur Dong (Licensed to Kill, Coming Out Under Fire, Forbidden City, U.S.A.), and presents eleven of the industry’s most accomplished Chinese and Chinese American film artists who share personal accounts of working in film. Ang Lee, Wayne Wang, Joan Chen, David Henry Hwang, Justin Lin, B.D. Wong, Nancy Kwan, Tsai Chin, Lisa Lu, James Hong, and Amy Tan are among the storytellers who have wrestled with being the “other” in Hollywood.

Non-Asian personalities are also featured to point out the controversy over portraying the Chinese in yellow-face. Two-time Oscar® winner Luise Rainer (Good Earth, 1937), character actor Christopher Lee (Fu Manchu, 1960-65), and 1940s matinee idol Turhan Bey (Dragon Seed, 1944) give first-hand recollections on being yellow on the silver screen.

Hollywood Chinese is punctuated with a dazzling treasure trove of clips from over 90 movies, dating from 1890s paper prints up to the current new wave of Asian American cinema. Hollywood Chinese also unearths films long thought to be lost. During the documentary’s production, filmmaker Arthur Dong remarkably discovered two nitrate reels of what is now acknowledged as the first Chinese American film ever made, The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916). Directed and written by filmmaker Marion Wong, it is also one of the earliest films made by a woman and was recently placed on the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

At once humorous, maddening, and inspiring, Hollywood Chinese weaves a rich and complicated tapestry, one marked by unforgettable performances and groundbreaking films, but also one tainted by a tangled history of race and representation.

Special Features (Only available on 2-Disc Collector’s Edition):

Full-length theatrical version of Hollywood Chinese

A trio of Soundies including 1940s renditions of Chinatown, My Chinatown and Where’s the Chicken in the Chicken Chow Mein, performed by white entertainers in faux Chinese settings. Soundies are short musical films produced in 1940-1947. A precursor to music videos, they were projected on coin-operated film jukeboxes in bars and restaurants.

A selection of 1900s paper prints from the Library of Congress collection, including That Chink at Golden Gulch, an early attempt by D.W. Griffith to portray a somewhat sensitive story about the Chinese in America.

A gallery of movie memorabilia from pre-1950s Hollywood films with Chinatown settings.

Trailers from The World of Suzie Wong and Charlie Chan Carries On

Newsreel footage from the 1961 premiere of Flower Drum Song in New York City and San Francisco.

CNEX Documentary Film Festival, Taipei
Göteborg International Film Festival
Hawaii International Film Festival
Hong Kong International Film Festival
Jerusalem International Film Festival
Seoul International Film Festival
Wisconsin Film Festival

See Also

Reviews

What’s amazing about Arthur Dong’s HOLLYWOOD CHINESE, a chronicle of Chinese Americans in Hollywood beginning in the silent era and culminating in today’s success stories, is how much fun it is. Loaded with film clips, celebrity interviews and without an ax to grind, it’s a film not just for Chinese Americans but for film lovers in general. FOURS STARS (highest rating)!

C. Allen Johnson, SF Chronicle

A subject at once rich and complex, encompassing social history and racial politics no less than film history. It’s a challenge to make sense of material that includes Bruce Lee, Ang Lee, and Christopher Lee (he starred in five Fu Manchu pictures). But HOLLYWOOD CHINESE manages to do it. The documentary is smart, lively, and informative.

Mark Feeney, Boston Globe

Filmmaker Arthur Dong offers up A CINEMATIC BANQUET — everything from tantalizing excerpts from a 1916 film directed by Chinese-American Marion Wong to an interview with 98-year-old Viennese actress Luise Rainer…impeccable and illuminating!

Lou Lumenich, New York Post

Arthur Dong once again proves that he is one of the most intelligent, incisive documentarians alive with HOLLYWOOD CHINESE, his study of the portrayal of this ethnic group in the movies. From the earliest, silent-era depictions of stereotyped Yellow Peril denizens to the present-day empowerment of the martial-arts oeuvre and its overwhelming influence in the industry, it’s been a tumultuous, complex road and Dong is alert to its every twist and turn. Myriad, amazingly culled interviews with actors, filmmakers and historians add rich texture to this bracingly entertaining, fast-moving survey.

David Noh, Film Journal International

GROUNDBREAKING! Overt racism collides with the economics of an industry and the perceptions of a culture in HOLLYWOOD CHINESE, a provocative critical survey of the first century of American cinema and the ways that Chinese and Chinese-Americans have been depicted by the industry.

S. James Synder, The New York Sun

If you want to see a FANTASIC overview of the struggle of Asian-Americans in film in the US, a struggle to be included, a struggle for a voice, a struggle for some truth, be sure to check out HOLLYWOOD CHINESE!